J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Only covering the right-hand (outer) half of the page, this drawing is a continuation from the view on folio 75 verso (D19527); Turner would have temporarily pulled the other page back and continued working here directly from its edge.

In this section, towers and spires are seen above the west bank of the River Maas (Meuse) at Maastricht; on the other page, its smaller neighbour, Wyck, is shown east of the Sint Servaasbrug upriver to the south, opposite the rest of the churches in the city centre. Folio 22 verso (D19440) shows the overall view, apparently from a little further back on the west bank. Here, the viewpoint would have been along low Sint-Antoniuseiland, between the two channels of the river shown on maps of the time; the western was subsequently widened and the other filled in, where the Griendpark runs along the bank.

Left to right in this part of the view, the cupola of the Stadhuis in the Markt square is shown deceptively near the Gothic spire of the Sint Janskerk and the twin west towers of the neighbouring Basilica of St Servaas (Servatius), which are on the Vrijthof square, about a quarter of a mile further to the south-west. The basilica’s west towers then flanked a tall spire, since lost; there is a closer study of their supporting Romanesque westwork base in the contemporary Holland sketchbook (Tate D19205; Turner Bequest CCXIV 184a). The tower of the Sint Matthiaskerk, with its modest dome and cupola, follows not far north of the Stadthuis, and last come the twin towers (and single surviving spire) of the lost monastic Sint Antoniuskerk, where tall industrial buildings now stand off the Maasboulevard east of Sint Teunisstraat. See under D19527 for the rest of the scene, and other Maastricht views.